I Feel Like I Know Her

"I feel like I know her, but sometimes my arms bend backwards": this is Laura Palmer's most famous line, spoken in the first scene of Twin Peaks set in The Red Room. It is also our inspiration for this film programme, which aims to investigate and reclaim a theme often coded according to patriarchal norms as the so-called "Feminine Mystique." In contrast, we propose a mysterious femininity, one that, like Laura Palmer's, seems elliptical, exerting fascination and magnetism, but which refuses to lend itself to binary or Manichean understandings. A femininity which acts disruptively on norms and gender roles, and which is in strong contact with its own agency and sexuality. Nonetheless, a femininity that cannot be explained in simple terms, that resists dichotomous interpretations, that, as they say, puts aside what belongs to her. A femininity that is conjugated in diverse and complex ways throughout the six films in this programme, directed by women and non-binary filmmakers: from the futuristic experiments of EROGENESIS, to the contact with the instinctual and the animalic in CROCODILE NEST and ARCTURUS, from the punk spirit of SOME OF YOU FUCKED EVA and the rebellion in DARIA'S NIGHT FLOWERS, to the dynastic games of LA DURMIENTE. (Flavia Dima)

Arcturus

Tuisku Lehto | Duration 26'

ARCTURUS is a poetic, autobiographical documentary about how the fear and grief of losing a mother take the unexpected shape of a bear. Giving fear a form changes it from an abstract feeling to something that can be seen and controlled, and even transformed into a source of strength. While reflecting on the process of loss, the film also explores how the relationship between bears and humans has changed over time.

Daria’s Night Flowers

Maryam Tafakory | Duration 26'

Daria has written her first manuscript about falling in love with a mysterious girl called ‘abi’ [blue]. The night flowers in her garden hide the secrets of a country that has turned love stories into routine crime scenes.

Crocodile Nest

Jazmin Rojas Forero | Duration 9'

The tropical hall of the Düsseldorf zoo is altered by the encounter between a woman and the crocodile keeper. While observing and being observed by crocodiles, they talk about family memories with reptiles in Colombia, ghosts and the zoo's history.

La Durmiente

Maria Inês Gonçalves | Duration 20'

LA DURMIENTE explores the story of the medieval Infanta Beatriz of Portugal through fabulation and children’s imagination. Shot entirely at the Monastery of Sancti Spiritus in Toro, a space once inhabited by Beatriz and where her tomb lies, the film looks at children staging and interpreting fragments of the life of this character erased by history, yet preponderant in the Portuguese dynastic crisis of 1383.

Some of You Fucked Eva

Lilith Grasmug | Duration 15'

2002, North Carolina. Teenagers recall the investigation into the mysterious fainting of high school cheerleaders.

Erogenesis

dir. Xandra Popescu | Duration 15'

In the aftermath of a mysterious disaster, the few humans left find themselves unable to reproduce the species. All hope lies in the hands of five women who have developed the technology to create human life outside the body.